Pittsburgh in Forth Worth: Football Bars, Sports Television, Sports Fandom, and the Management of Home

This essay examines how sports fandom fits into the nexus of late capitalism, displacement and identity within the United States. The essay adds to this growing literature on late capitalism and sports fandom by analyzing how displaced fans look to sports teams from their former places of residence as a way to understand “home.” An ethnography of a Pittsburgh Steelers fan club in Fort Worth, Texas, is used as a case study. Drawing on the fields of television studies and cultural geography as well as theories of diaspora, this essay argues that sports fandom allows displaced people the ability to reconnect with and manage the irreconcilable tensions of home.